A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

by Betty Smith

  "Slob! Slob! Slob!" shouted Francie passionately.

  "Crazy, crazy, crazy," chanted the little girl.

  "Slob! Dirty slob," screamed Francie sobbing in her impotence.

  The little girl skipped away, her fat curls bouncing in the sun and sang in a clear high voice: "Sticks and stones will break my bones but names will never hurt me. When I die, you will cry for all the names you called me."

  And Francie did cry. Not for all the names called but because she was lonesome and nobody wanted to play with her. The rougher children found Francie too quiet and the better behaved ones seemed to shun her. Dimly, Francie felt that it wasn't all her fault. It had something to do with Aunt Sissy who came to the house so often, the way Sissy looked and the way the men in the neighborhood looked after Sissy when she passed. It had something to do with the way Papa couldn't walk straight sometimes and walked sideways down the street when he came home. It had something to do with the way neighbor women asked her questions about Papa and Mama and Sissy. Their wheedling offhand questions did not deceive Francie. Had not Mama warned her: "Don't let the neighbors pick on you."

  So in the warm summer days the lonesome child sat on her stoop and pretended disdain for the group of children playing on the sidewalk. Francie played with imaginary companions and made believe that they were better than real children. But all the while her heart beat in rhythm to the poignant sadness of the song the children sang while walking around in a ring with hands joined.

  Walter, Walter Wildflower.

  Growing up so high.

  As we are all young ladies

  And very sure to die.

  Excepting Lizzie Wehner

  Who is the finest flower.

  Hide, hide, hide for shame.

  Turn your back and

  Tell your beau's name.

  They paused while the chosen girl, after much coaxing, finally whispered a boy's name. Francie wondered what name she'd give if they ever asked her to play. Would they laugh if she whispered Johnny Nolan?

  The little girls whooped when Lizzie whispered a name. Again they joined hands and walked around in a circle genially advertising the boy.

  Hermy Bachmeier

  Is a fine young man.

  He comes to the door

  With his hat in his hand.

  Down comes she

  All dressed in silk.

  Tomorrow, tomorrow,

  The wedding shall begin.

  The girls stopped and clapped their hands joyously. Then without motivation, there was a change in mood. The girls went around the ring slower and with lowered heads.

  Mother, Mother, I am sick.

  Send for the doctor,

  Quick, quick, quick!

  Doctor, Doctor, shall I die?

  Yes, my darling,

  By and by.

  How many coaches shall I have?

  Enough for you and

  Your family, too.

  In other neighborhoods there were different words to the song but essentially it was the same game. No one knew where the words had come from. Little girls learned them from other little girls and it was the most frequently played game in Brooklyn.

  There were other games. There were jacks that two little girls could play together sitting on the steps of a stoop. Francie played jacks by herself, first being Francie and then her opponent. She'd talk to the imaginary player. "I'm for threesies and you're for twosies," she'd say.

  Potsy was a game that the boys started and the girls finished. A couple of boys would put a tin can on the car track and sit along the curb and watch with a professional eye as the trolley wheels flattened the can. They'd fold it and put it on the track again. Again it was flattened, folded and flattened again. Soon there was a flat heavy square of metal. Numbered squares were marked off on the sidewalk and the game was turned over to the girls who hopped on one foot pushing the potsy from square to square. Who ever got through the squares with the least number of hops won the game.

  Francie made a potsy. She put a can on the tracks. She watched with a professional frown as the car ran over it. She shuddered in delighted horror when she heard the scrunch. Would the motorman be mad, she wondered, if he knew that she was making his trolley car work for her? She made the squares but could only write one and seven. She hopped through a game ardently wishing someone were playing with her as she was sure she won with less hops than any other little girl in the world.

  Sometimes there was music in the streets. This was something that Francie could enjoy without companions. A three-piece band came around once a week. They wore ordinary suits but funny hats, like a motorman's hat only the top was squashed in. When Francie heard the children shouting, "Here comes the Bettelbubbers," she'd run out on the street, sometimes dragging Neeley with her.

  The band consisted of a fiddle, drum and cornet. The men played old Viennese airs and if they didn't play well, they at least played loud. Little girls waltzed with each other, round and round on the warm summer sidewalks. There were always two boys who did a grotesque dance together, mimicking the girls and bumping into them rudely. When the girls got angry, the boys would bow with great exaggeration (being sure their buttocks would bump another dancing couple), and apologize in flowery language.

  Francie wished she could be one of the brave ones who took no part in the dancing but stood close to the horn-blower sucking noisily on big dripping pickles. This made saliva flow into the horn which made the cornet player very angry. If provoked enough, he'd let out a string of oaths in German ending up with something that sounded like Gott verdammte Ehrlandiger Jude. Most Brooklyn Germans had a habit of calling everyone who annoyed them a Jew.

  Francie was fascinated by the money angle. After two songs, the fiddle and horn carried on alone while the drummer went around hat in hand ungraciously accepting the pennies doled out to him. After canvassing the street, he'd stand on the curb's edge and look up at the house windows. Women wrapped two pennies in a bit of newspaper and tossed them down. The newspaper was essential. Any pennies thrown loose were considered fair game by the boys and they scrambled for them, picked them up and ran off down the street with an angry musician after them. For some reason, they wouldn't try to get the wrapped pennies. They'd pick them up sometimes and hand them to the musicians. It was some sort of code that made them agree as to whose pennies were whose.

  If the musicians got enough, they'd play another song. If the take was meager, they'd move on, hoping for greener fields. Francie, usually dragging Neeley along, often followed the musicians from stop to stop, street to street, until it got dark and time for the musicians to disband. Francie was but one of a crowd as many children followed the band Pied Piper fashion. Many of the little girls towed baby brothers and sisters along, some in homemade wagons, others in busted-down baby buggies. The music cast such a spell over them that they forgot about home and eating. And the little babies cried, wet their pants, slept, woke to cry again, wet their pants again and went to sleep again. And "The Beautiful Blue Danube" played on and on.

  Francie thought the musicians had a fine life. She made plans. When Neeley got bigger, he would play the hot-hot (his name for an accordion) and she would bang a tambourine on the street and people would throw them pennies and they'd get rich and Mama wouldn't have to work anymore.

  Although she followed the band, Francie liked the organ grinder better. Every once in a while a man came around lugging a small organ with a monkey perched atop it. The monkey wore a red jacket with gold braid and a red pillbox hat strapped under his chin. His red pants had a convenient hole in them so that his tail could stick out. Francie loved that monkey. She'd give him her precious penny-for-candy just for the happiness of seeing him tip his hat to her. If Mama was around, she'd come out with a penny that should have gone into the tin-can bank and give it to the man with sharp instructions not to mistreat his monkey; and if he did and she found out, she would report him. The Italian never understood a word she said and always made the same answer. H
e pulled off his hat, bowed humbly with a little crook of the leg and called out eagerly, "Si, Si."

  The big organ was different. When that came around it was like a fiesta. The organ was pulled by a dark curly-haired man with very white teeth. He wore green velveteen pants and a brown corduroy jacket from which hung a red bandana handkerchief. He wore one hoop earring. The woman who helped him pull the organ wore a swirling red skirt and a yellow blouse and large hoop earrings.

  The music tinkled out shrilly, a song from Carmen or Il Trovatore. The woman shook a dirty, beribboned tambourine and listlessly punched it with her elbow in time to the music. At the end of a song, she'd twirl suddenly showing her stout legs in dirty white cotton stockings and a flash of multicolored petticoats.

  Francie never noticed the dirt and the lassitude. She heard the music and saw the flashing colors and felt the glamor of a picturesque people. Katie warned her never to follow the big organ. Katie said that those organ grinders who dressed up so were Sicilians. And all the world knew that the Sicilians belonged to the Black Hand and that the Black Hand Society always kidnapped little children and held them for ransom. They took the child and left a note saying to leave a hundred dollars in the cemetery and signed it with the black imprint of a hand. That's what mama said about those organ grinders.

  For days after the organ grinder had been around, Francie played organ grinder. She hummed what she recalled of Verdi and bumped her elbow on an old pie tin pretending it was a tambourine. She ended the game by drawing an outline of her hand on paper and filling it in with black crayon.

  Sometimes Francie wavered. She didn't know whether it would be better to be a band when she grew up or an organ grinder lady. It would be nice if she and Neeley could get a little organ and a cute monkey. All day they could have fun with him for nothing and go around playing and watching him tip his hat. And people would give them a lot of pennies and the monkey could eat with them and maybe sleep in her bed at night. This profession seemed so desirable that Francie announced her intentions to Mama but Katie threw cold water on the project telling her not to be silly; that monkeys had fleas and she wouldn't allow a monkey in one of her clean beds.

  Francie toyed with the idea of being a tambourine lady. But then she'd have to be a Sicilian and kidnap little children and she didn't want to do that, although drawing a black hand was fun.

  There was always the music. There were songs and dancing on the Brooklyn streets in those long ago summers and the days should have been joyous. But there was something sad about those summers, something sad about the children, thin in body but with the baby curves still lingering in their faces, singing in sad monotony as they went through the figures of a ring game. It was sad the way they were still babies of four and five years of age but so precocious about taking care of themselves. "The Blue Danube" that the band played was sad as well as bad. The monkey had sad eyes under his bright red cap. The organ grinder's tune was sad under its lilting shrillness.

  Even the minstrels who came in the back yards and sang

  If I had my way,

  You would never grow old

  were sad, too. They were bums and they were hungry and they didn't have talent for song-making. All they had in the world was the nerve to stand in a back yard with cap in hand and sing loudly. The sad thing was in the knowing that all their nerve would get them nowhere in the world and that they were lost as all people in Brooklyn seem lost when the day is nearly over and even though the sun is still bright, it is thin and doesn't give you warmth when it shines on you.

  14

  LIFE WAS PLEASANT IN LORIMER STREET AND THE NOLANS WOULD have kept on living there if it hadn't been for Aunt Sissy and her big but mistaken heart. It was Sissy's business with the tricycle and the balloons that ruined and disgraced the Nolans.

  One day Sissy was laid off from work and decided to go over and look after Francie and Neeley while Katie was working. A block before she got to their house, her eyes were dazzled by the sun glinting off the brass handlebar of a handsome tricycle. It was a kind of vehicle that you don't see nowadays. It had a wide leather seat, big enough for two little children, with a back to it and an iron steering bar leading to the small front wheel. There were two larger wheels in the back. There was a handlebar of solid brass on top the steering rod. The pedals were in front of the seat and a child sat in it at ease, pedaled it while leaning back in the seat and steered it with the handlebars which lay across the lap.

  Sissy saw that tricycle standing there unattended in front of a stoop. She didn't hesitate. She took the tricycle, pulled it around to the Nolan house, got the children out and gave them a ride.

  Francie thought it was wonderful! She and Neeley sat in the seat and Sissy pulled them around the block. The leather seat was warm from the sun and had a rich and expensive smell. The hot sun danced on the brass handlebar and it looked like living fire. Francie thought that if she touched it, it would burn her hand surely. Then something happened.

  A small crowd bore down on them headed by a hysterical woman and a bawling boy. The woman rushed at Sissy yelling "Robber!" She grabbed the handlebars and pulled. Sissy held on tightly. Francie almost got thrown out. The cop on the beat came rushing up.

  "What's this? What's this?" Thus he took over.

  "This lady is a robber," reported the woman. "She stole my little boy's tricycle."

  "I didn't steal it, Sergeant," said Sissy in her soft appealing voice. "It was just standing there and standing there so I borrowed it to give the kids a ride. They never rode in such a fine tricycle. You know what a ride means to a kid. It's just heaven." The cop stared at the mute children in the seat. Francie grinned at him in trembling panic. "I was only going to ride them once around the block and then take it back. Honest, Sarge."

  The cop let his eyes rest on Sissy's well-shaped bust which was not spoiled any by the tight waists that she liked to wear. He turned to the harassed mother.

  "Why do you want to be so stingy for, lady?" he said. "Let her give the kids a ride around the block. It ain't no skin off your teeth." (Only he didn't say "teeth," to the snickering delight of the youngsters clustered around.) "Let her give them a spin and I'll see that you get the bike back safe."

  He was the law. What could the woman do? The cop gave the bawling kid a nickel and told him to shut up. He dispersed the crowd very simply by telling them he'd send for the pie wagon and take them all down to the station house if they didn't twenty-three skidoo.

  The crowd scattered. The cop, swinging his club, gallantly escorted Sissy and her charges around the block. Sissy looked up at him and smiled into his eyes. Whereupon he stuck his club in his belt and insisted on pulling the bike for her. Sissy trotted along beside him on her tiny high-heeled shoes and cast a spell over him with her soft fluttering voice. They walked around the block three times, the cop pretending not to notice the hands that went up to hide smiles as the people saw a fully uniformed officer of the law so engaged. He talked warmly to Sissy, mostly about his wife who was a good woman, you understand, but you know, a kind of invalid.

  Sissy said she understood.

  After the bike episode, people talked. They talked enough about Johnny coming home drunk once in a while and about how the men looked at Sissy. Now they had this to add on. Katie thought of moving. It was getting like Bogart Street where the neighbors knew too much about the Nolans. While Katie was thinking about looking for another place, something else happened and they had to move right away. The thing that finally drove them from Lorimer Street was stark raw sex. Only it was very innocent, looked at in the right way.

  One Saturday afternoon, Katie had an odd job at Gorling's, a large department store in Williamsburg. She fixed coffee and sandwiches for the Saturday night supper that the boss gave the girls in lieu of overtime money. Johnny was at Union Headquarters waiting for a job to find him. Sissy wasn't working that day. Knowing that the children would be left alone locked in the rooms, she decided to keep them company.

  Sh
e knocked at the door calling out that she was Aunt Sissy. Francie opened the door on the chain to make sure before she let her in. The children swarmed over Sissy smothering her with hugs. They loved her. To them, she was a beautiful lady who always smelled sweet, wore beautiful clothes and brought them amazing presents.

  Today she brought a sweet-smelling cedar cigar box, several sheets of tissue paper, some red and some white, and a jar of paste. They sat around the kitchen table and went to work decorating the box. Sissy outlined circles on the paper with a quarter and Francie cut them out. Sissy showed her how to make them into little paper cups by molding the circles around the end of a pencil. When they had a lot of cups made, Sissy drew a heart on the box cover. The bottom of each red cup was given a dab of paste and the cup was pasted on the penciled heart. The heart was filled in with red cups. The rest of the lid was filled in with white. When the top was finished it looked like a bed of closely packed white carnations with a heart of red ones. The sides were filled in with white cups and the inside lined with red tissue. You never could tell it had been a cigar box, it was that beautiful. The box took up most of the afternoon.

  Sissy had a chop suey date at five and she got ready to leave. Francie clung to her and begged her not to go. Sissy hated to leave, yet she didn't want to miss her date. She searched in her purse for something to amuse them in her absence. They stood at her knee helping her look. Francie spied a cigarette box and pulled it out. On the cover was a picture of a man lying on a couch, knees crossed, one foot dangling in the air and smoking a cigarette which made a big smoke ring over his head. In the ring was a picture of a girl with her hair in her eyes and her bust popping out of her dress. The name on the box was American Dreams. It was out of the stock at Sissy's factory.

  The children clamored for the box. Sissy reluctantly let them have it after explaining that the box contained cigarettes and was only to hold and to look at and not under any circumstances to be opened. They must not touch the seals, she said.